Pregnancy

“WOW! I can’t believe another year has passed already.” 2017 seemed to go by double quick with our little one around. Our son has changed and grown before our very eyes these 14 months. I wonder what this fresh, new year will hold for the 3 of us! I’m excited to find out!

Shortly after finding out I was pregnant, my husband and I joyfully skipped off to my first prenatal appointment. We were both so excited and ready to see our very first baby, in our very first sonogram, AND, as my cousin had informed me, hear our very first baby’s heartbeat!

We waited patiently, but also anxiously, in the exam room for the doctor. Once she arrived and talked to us a bit, she had me prepare for the ultrasound. As the image appeared on that black and white screen, she said nothing. My heart raced as I waited for her to explain what was on the screen.

Time has made the details a little hazy, but she basically told us, “I can’t confirm the pregnancy because all I can see is a gestational sac.”

I asked, “But doesn’t a gestational sac mean I’m pregnant?

“She said, “I can’t confirm that.”

So many thoughts went through my head at once. What?! I might not be pregnant? I don’t understand! How can there be a gestational sac without a pregnancy?

I began this evening writing out a different post. I paused to put my son to bed. (He had been playing hard and giggling lots with his Daddy.) As he nursed quietly in the dark, I felt him relax and I knew he was asleep. That relaxing has become so familiar to me now, but it wasn’t always.

Before reading tonight’s Bible passages, I opened up the Prime Photo App on my phone. Every day, the app will feature all the pictures from prior years. This has become something my husband and I do daily, and then we chat about it. “Hey, did you see this picture from 2009?”

When my husband and I were wanting to have a baby, we expected that I would become pregnant within a few months. Three years later, we were frustrated and discouraged. I asked a friend of mine to pray. She had struggled for years and then had her miracle baby.

Wisely, she cautioned me, “Don’t let conception become your idol.”

This is something that I really needed to hear as I was letting our plan to have a baby overtake my life. I felt like less of a woman because I wasn’t becoming pregnant and I was resentful of my husband because I was certain he didn’t care as much as me. I know now I was angry with God although I wouldn’t have admitted it at the time. Why wasn’t He letting my husband and I have children?

Whenever I thought about childbirth, I never really wanted to have a baby in the hospital. To me, a hospital was a place people go when they are sick, bleeding, or dying. I didn’t think of it as a great place to bring a baby into the world. Obviously, many babies are born in a hospital and arrive home healthy and happy. It just wasn’t something I was particularly interested in.

For some people, a hospital birth is the only way that comes to mind, so upon mentioning giving birth at a birth center or at home, with midwives, rather than doctors, one witnesses an interesting variety of responses. Some of them are comical, and most all of them are sincere and out of a place of concern.

If you missed it, read the beginning of this story, called “Finding Out I’m Pregnant.”
How I Told My Husband He’s Going to Be a Father

After the shock wore off and I ceased gaping at the wonderful pee stick that announced the good news that I was, in fact, for the first time, pregnant, I set down the pregnancy test and skipped into the bedroom. I crawled in bed next to my husband, on HIS side, and said softly, “Honey, I’m pregnant.”

The happiest day of my life after my wedding day and before the day my son was born, was the day I found out I was pregnant.

I have mentioned before that my husband and I had wanted to have a baby for quite some time. From the first time we agreed to try to conceive to the moment of that positive pregnancy test was nearly three years.

I had spent a week at work feeling tired and strangely out of breath. I remember telling my boss as I was cleaning one day that I felt weird and jokingly told her, “Ha! Maybe I’m pregnant!” She said, “You better take a test.” I laughed it off at the time, but the more I thought about it the more I realized I had never quite felt the way I did.

Our Little Dinosaur
This endearing term refers to my son. The name was coined by my husband (aka Lil Dino Daddy) a few weeks before he was born. One day, while he and I were shopping for baby clothes at our local resale shop, my husband would only consider items that had dinosaurs on them. After my son arrived in early November, 2016, we finally gave those cute little clothes a purpose. Remembering our shopping adventure, I stealthily selected one of the outfits my husband had picked out – one featuring dinosaurs. I then dressed my tiny baby boy and took him into the other room to show his Daddy. Once my husband saw him in his “stegosaurus” outfit, his eyes grew wide in excitement as he exclaimed, “Aww, come here my little dinosaur!”